Presidential candidates in Guinea, including military ruler General Mamady Doumbouya, have held their final political rallies ahead of Sunday's elections. Key opposition challengers have been barred.
A total of 6.8 million people in the west African nation are eligible to vote Sunday, choosing between nine candidates, including 41-year-old Doumbouya, who is running as an independent.
The vote is unlikely to deliver any surprises. Despite his initial promise to return power to civilians when he took power in a military coup in 2021, Doumbouya is running for president – in an election with all the main opposition barred.
In the capital Conakry, the junta leader appeared in public on Thursday evening to cheers from several hundred of his supporters.
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Dressed in sportswear, he danced to music, accompanied by tight security provided by the Special Forces, his former unit.
Earlier, Amadou Oury Bah, his campaign manager and the country's prime minister, addressed the crowd, asking them to vote overwhelmingly for Doumbouya to allow him to "fulfill a constitutional mandate that will meet your expectations and needs".
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Opposition excluded
Guinea's opposition is calling for a boycott of the vote, which follows a tenure marked by repression, imprisonment, and disappearances of vocal opponents.
Doumbouya's election rivals are relative unknowns since all the main opposition figures were excluded.
One of the opposition candidates running from the Democratic Front of Guinea (FRONDEG), Abdoulaye Yero Balde, also held a rally in the capital where he called on voters to support him so "the future that lies before us will be the best we have had after 67 years of independence".
Doumbouya has cracked down on civil liberties, and the junta has banned protests since 2022. Many opponents have been arrested, put on trial or driven to exile.
Since its independence from France in 1958, Guinea has had a complex history of military and authoritarian rule, including multiple military interventions.
In 2010, it voted in its first free and fair elections since independence.
But the military coup in 2021 destabilised the country’s democratic trajectory, and led to suspensions from the African Union and sanctions from the regional Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) bloc.
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Guinea holds one of the world’s largest deposits of iron ore and is the leading exporter of bauxite – a key component of aluminium. But more than half of its inhabitants live below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures for 2024.
(with AFP)
